The Angry Bear

RIP Oliver Williamson Oliver Williamson died yesterday at age 87, I do not know of what. He was famous as the main developer of New Institutional Economics, following the influence of Ronald Coase, which emphasizes the role of transactions costs in the formation and development of economic (and some other) institutions.  He received the Nobel Prize in 2009, along with Elinor Ostrom, but his influence was really quite vast for a man from a working class...

Bad news and good news on coronavirus; plus, implications for Election Day No economic news today as we head into the Memorial Day weekend, but there are a few coronavirus and economic/political developments of note. First, the bad news: the declining trend in new diagnosed cases of coronavirus in the US has stopped in the past week. Instead new cases have leveled off. Here’s a graph from Conor Kelly’s excellent tableau coronavirus dashboard page:...

As noted in my last post, I have been looking at data. This usually causes trouble, and today is no exception. As anyone who was paying attention predicted, the “Easter Effect”–a large gathering of people (“EC” or Otherwise) in an enclosed area that likely has multiple asymptomatic carriers (and likely a few with symptoms) is a recipe for infection. With a two- to three-week gestation period, that there was going to be an increase in cases at the end of...

How Large is the Income Shifting Problem? I took up this invitation from Dan Shaviro: tomorrow morning I’ll be participating in a very interesting international tax policy conference with a number of outstanding participants. It’s on Zoom … I’m actually the second speaker on Panel II (although we’re listed above alphabetically), so I will be speaking from roughly 11:08 to 11:15. I’m planning to discuss the OECD’s Pillar 1 and Pillar 2 initiatives,...

by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for May 18 – 22 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. Many of the indicators are bouncing off their worst levels, especially those like mortgages that are affected by lower interest rates. On the other hand, employment losses continue to spread out. As usual, clicking over and reading not only should be educational for you, but rewards me a little bit for my efforts....

Initial jobless claims: employment damage continues to spread Now that there is more than one month of data from initial and continuing jobless claims since the coronavirus lockdowns started, we can begin to trace whether the economic impacts of the virus are being contained, or are continuing to spread out into further damage. Nine weeks in, it appears that, insofar as employment is concerned, the damage is continuing to spread. First, let’s look at...

I was a vehement advocate of prescribing hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) off label while waiting for the results of clinical trials. I wasn’t all that much embarrassed to agree with Donald Trump for once. Now I feel obliged to note that my guess was totally wrong. I thought that the (uncertain) expected benefits were greater than the (relatively well known) costs. The cost is that HCQ affects the heart beat prolonging the QT period (from when the atrium...

Maybe This Is Not (Technically) A Recession? Here I am using what is the journalistic definition of a “recession,” also used in many nations although not officially in the US, where these things are determined ex post by an NBER committee.  Anyway, that “journalistic” definition is that there be two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth.  Today in the Washington Post I saw a story on global carbon emissions, which are very closely correlated with...

New coronavirus cases vs. testing in “reopened” States Are new coronavirus infections increasing in States that “reopened” on or about May 1? The jury is still out. The number of infections is up in 4 of the 5 biggest States that have done so, but so are the number of tests. The likelihood that most or all of the increase is an artificial of an increase in testing depends on the date on which you start your comparison. I haven’t been able to find graphs...